Amazon.com, the technology, online services and international shipping giant, has acquired Twitch, an online video game company, for nearly $1 billion. This is no game; these two online companies have been working on this deal for quite some time.

The acquisition of Twitch by Amazon was announced toward the end of Augst and took place between the beginning of September. The Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear, explained in an interview that their company will still have independence from Amazon.

Amazon has two decades of experience with online services, Twitch -- which is a spinoff of Justin.tv -- has been around for three years, but it is extremely popular with its online gaming platform.

Amazon purchased Twitch for $970 million. At the moment, Amazon has a whopping 244 million active users, and Twitch has 55 million active users. For Twitch, this could enlarge their viewership and give them more access to other video game users.

The online gaming company's popularity and influence has grown rapidly since its debut. In June 2011, the streaming video game platform was born offering users video games and ways to stream other video games. Within a year, Twitch gained 20 million viewers per month, Consumerist reported. By mid-2013, they amassed twice the amount of users: 45 million.

As of July of this year, Twitch has 55 million users per month. The number of users that they have surpasses that of Netflix with 50 million users. The 55 million streaming video game users have already watched 15 billion minutes of content, Consumerist reported.

Twitch even rivals Hulu. In February of this year, Twitch gained more traffic than the video streaming site Hulu. Twitch's popularity grew even more when it made deals with Microsoft and Sony to power live streaming on the Xbox One, and the PlayStation 4 consoles, CNET reported.

Amazon and Twitch have already been working together before the acquisition. Twitch shepherds video game purchases with their business partners linking them to product pages like Amazon. This way the online gaming company advertises to gamers, CNET reported.

This merger might be a win-win for both online companies. Amazon has a huge, efficient, and highly scalable web hosting, and cloud streaming operation. Twitch clocks in with 55 million active video game users; the video game crowd is what Amazon has not fully immersed itself in, Consumerist reported. Amazon is branching into digital content, and video game development, having Twitch is a match for both companies.

Shear has made a deal with Amazon that gives the online video game company autonomy from the online shipping giant. If Amazon had 100 percent controlling interest Shear says, "It would destroy what Twitch is," CNET reported.

"I know it's the last thing I want and I think it's the last thing Amazon wants too," Shear said.

In an interview with Forbes, Shear explained that they were glad to know from Amazon that independence would be worked out.

"You get retained as a fully owned subsidiary. Those kind of symbolic things have a great meaning. It's different being the senior vice president of the Twitch division versus being the CEO of Twitch, Inc.," Shear said, Forbes reported

With Amazon's acquisition of Twitch the online video gaming company can integrate fully Amazon Web Services (AWS). Shear says that AWS is an "amazing piece of software" which they could integrate into their network, Forbes reported. As a result, Shear says this could make them "the best live video system in the world."

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